It's been touched on before in various Slashdot discussions, but the mainstream media is starting to pay more attention to Ron Paul, darling of the Internet libertarian set, and the attention isn't very flattering. An article in The New Republic, "Angry White Man" lays out in detail how Paul's newsletters have over the years published a wide variety of paranoid and racist material. As Cato Institute scholar Tim Lee points out, it's not really important whether Paul wrote the statements or someone else did. His name is on the publication. What sort of an executive doesn't take responsibility for statements made under his name?

It's a shame. Voters are looking for a third way, and for a time Ron Paul seemed a breath of fresh air. But when you get into the rough-and-tumble of presidential politics, everything is scrutinized. I'm thankful that the press is finally investigating Paul in more detail, but I suspect that many Paul supporters will try to pretend that he's still a worthy candidate. They'll ignore his "extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society" and they'll pretend his newsletters never contained headlines like this one about racial disturbances in the Adams Morgan district in Washington, D.C.: "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo."

That's not confronting political correctness. That's racism. I don't want a president who tolerates crap like this to be written under his name, whether by him or by someone else.

I'm getting so tired of reading Slashdot comments in which the ill-informed hold forth on the fair use exception in copyright law. It is particularly galling when someone makes a pronouncement about a "truth" of fair use that is actually fact-dependent. For example, use of copyrighted materials for teaching has been recognized as falling under the fair use exception. However, that doesn't mean that a professor can just copy a few chapters of this book, a few from that book, and some from another book, slap it together, and use it as a coursebook without paying any licensing fees.

Fair use is a balance that cannot be codified with the sorts of clean boundaries that apply in mathematics. The law is about human behavior, and human behavior gets messy. It gets particularly messy when you're talking about the legal fiction that is copyright law. Pretending that it isn't, and attempting to distill it down to easy pronouncements doesn't help our understanding of it, any more than Lou Dobbs is really telling us what's going on in the money markets. Sure, a clean, crisp pronouncement goes down easy, but it's nothing but sugar water. Unfortunately many people like the taste of sugar water, and they spread the same misinformation to other people. It happens over and over again here on Slashdot, every time a story about copyright pops up.

I know just enough about TCP/IP to be dangerous. So I don't hold forth on the subject. I wish the vocal ill-informed would realize that just because they've read a few comments by other ill-informed Slashdotters doesn't mean that they actually know anything about fair use. Wisdom of the crowds, my ass.

The EFF's Fair Use FAQ

Am I the only person in the world who is being driven to madness by the profusion of blog posts that are nothing more than lists?

Here's a great example: 101 Resources to Help You Build a Better Web Form. WTF? This is a LIST OF LINKS. If I wanted lists of links, I'd go back in time to 1994 and use Yahoo!

Every time I check the del.icio.us home page, it's the same thing. Half the bookmarks are to blog posts with titles like, "15 Ways to Make Your Life Better." Why not 16? Why not 20? Are each of the methods in this list of equal value? What are the selection criteria?

Yes, I understand that this is really all about SEO whoring. Yes, I understand that some posts with titles like, "25 Rounded Corners Techniques with CSS" are helpful. But creating lists of links isn't writing. It's duplicating what directories and search engines already do.

Lists are easy. Lists require no serious critical thinking or discrimination. But they're not terribly helpful either. I don't want 25 rounded corners techniques any more than I want to use 25 different email applications. If you're going to talk about rounded corners or fixing my life or fixing my life with rounded corners, give me some human analysis and some context. Otherwise you're giving me nothing I couldn't get from an automated query.

His latest is full of clever insights.

The XBox, rather than a money pit, has been an "experiment", merely the first stage in a Microsoft plan to roll out their own PC.

Rolling out Microsoft branded PCs is a good idea because, um... "perhaps making a Microsoft computer that adheres to the often-ignored Microsoft reference designs might reinvigorate the once-lively PC buzz." I know I'll be excited by a machine that FINALLY adheres to the Microsoft reference designs.

This is also a good move because Microsoft has been successful at playing follow-the leader in the past: "Microsoft has been very successful with this copycat strategy." So copying Apple's ill-fated Mac clone move is a good idea? When you're competing against other hardware vendors, there's a built in conflict of interest. If Microsoft wants to advance the Linux cause, there's no better way than to start shipping Microsoft-branded PCs in the United States. Michael Dell and the boys and girls at H-P won't take such a move lying down.

Dvorak's answer to this is that "[Microsoft] has them over a barrel since their only alternative is Linux, which has little chance of becoming popular anytime soon." Uh, where have you been, bro? And do you really think that forcing your hardware partners into a corner with your offerings will keep them *away* from Linux? How would you react if all of the big PC OEMs jumped on the Linux bandwagon, developing their own distros and contributing to kernel development?

Dvorak presumes too much foresight from Microsoft. They put the XBox out there as a way to cover their asses from a flank attack by consoles. Dvorak also thinks "[a]n inordinate effort has been made to integrate the Xbox with the PC, via Microsoft Media PC software." Right. Obviously. I mean, Microsoft wouldn't want to try and standardize their software platforms as much as possible unless they were secretly planning (for the past SIX years) to roll out their own PC hardware. I don't buy the argument that this is a deliberate, well-orchestrated clever Microsoft plan.

If Microsoft does roll out PCs in the US market, it will be just another example of Microsoft reacting to a marketplace that is no longer in its grip. And it will only serve to push hardware OEMs into the arms of Linux.

The "own the OS and let others build the hardware" model was good while it lasted.

If Microsoft really wanted to take some risks and be bold with its future, the company would have a team building a completely new OS, from the ground up, along with the next-generation hardware to run it. And no, Surface doesn't count. Surface is a great concept, but it's a $5-10k table running MS Vista, and it took six years to create.

Give the commando team a year, some money, and a building of their own. If they come up with something good, sell it. Pull a Procter & Gamble and compete against yourself. Stop milking the Windows/Office cow. The teats are going dry, boys and girls.

Here's a summer experiment. Instead of spending an hour a day watching TV "news", do the following:

• Stay up on headlines with an RSS feed to whatever news source you prefer. Check once in the morning for ten minutes, and once in the evening for ten minutes.
• Read the weekly print version of The Economist. It is perfect breakfast reading.
• Every Sunday pick up a copy of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune.

After a month, and probably well before that point, your fear will disappear. The bleach-blonde news delivery vector will no longer seem necessary. You'll feel much better informed. You'll realize that there is no real point in watching a talking head interpreting the news for you in front of the White House, or in a flashy TV studio. You'll also realize that video footage often distorts larger truths and serves only to titilate. It is the crack that keeps you coming back.

Once you kick the habit, you may never go back.

Some people feel that MPEG-4 is inherently evil because it is encumbered by patents. Given that tools for transcoding to and manipulating Ogg Theora are sometimes difficult to work with, how many Open Source users/advocates simply refuse to use MPEG files (not to mention QuickTime and Windows Media) they come across on the Net? Are a very small number of users making a big deal about this, or is there a widespread feeling that Open Source users have an imperative need for a patent-free video format? If so, what are the tangible benefits of Theora for users of proprietary operating systems?

I'm taking Copyright this semester, and I'm loving the class so far. The textbook, Copyright in a Global Information Economy is (again, so far) excellent. As I read about the distinctions between copyright and patent law, I can't help but believe that Andrew F. Knight's monstrously arrogant and obnoxious moneygrubbing attempt to patent a storyline will fail. His patent application is well-covered terrain, and many sharp minds have expressed their opinions about why this moronic endeavor flies in the face of common sense and good public policy.

As I read the cases in my textbook, however, I find a more basic rationale for rejecting the claim. Authors write. Inventors discover. The distinction between copyrightable creative works and patentable inventions goes back to before ratification of the U.S. Constitution., and in spite of (or perhaps because of) the morass we're in with patent law at present, the last thing the USPTO will do is radically alter the balance between copyright and patent. If they grant a patent, there will be a court challenge, and the USPTO is already backpeddaling on recent enlargements to the universe of patentable discoveries (systems and methods claims have already been questioned in the Supreme Court, for example).

As for Andrew F. Knight, I find his behavior to be the reprehensible but not surprising product of a society that has tilted so far toward the pursuit of individual profit, whatever the effect on society at large. We all have to make ethical decisions every day, whether we work for Enron or Sun Microsystems or the US Army or for Knight and Associates. Maybe, if we're lucky, the overreaching of people like Knight will start to shift the public at large toward a broader conception of prosperity, one that doesn't focus on using the law to protect a few at the expense of many.

I've been doing a lot of reading about open source licenses lately. There are many books and articles about the "open source phenomenon" but to my knowledge there are really only a handfull of books that explore the nitty-gritty of actual open source licenses. Two I've read recently:

Lawrence Rosen's meticulous Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law was published in 2004 and is available in print or in PDF segments. I found the hard copy worth buying - it is well-thumbed and full of highlighted areas now that I've read it straight through then come back to reread sections as detailed questions pop up. This is a dense book, and it doesn't provide black and white answers. However, it is worth the effort.

Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing, by Andrew M. St. Laurent was published in 2004 and is also available in print or PDF. This book jumps more quickly into the licensing terms of specific licenses, making it somewhat less valuable as an overview book but a bit better for examining the fine details of some licenses. It also covers the Creative Commons licenses and goes into some detail about why shared source licenses are quite different from open source licenses. When you are using one of the big open source licenses (GPL, BSD/MIT, Apache, MPL) and need a solid reference, this book does the trick. It is well-written, clear, and well organized.

After getting engaged in the recent discussion about Stallman's bashing of CC, I really like Ken "Ceasar" Fisher's take on it. The gist of Fisher's argument is that we shouldn't get pissy when people come up with a means of providing more options and more flexibility. The silver-bullet crowd is painting this as a battle between good and evil, and they seem to relish throwing stones at the people are trying to actually come up with workable alternatives to the current logjams.

Get out of the ivory tower and realize that commerce is not evil. Protecting intellectual property is not evil. Balancing the rights of content creators and the rights of society at large is the goal. Focus on workable solutions. Try different approaches. Think win-win instead of zero-sum.

I'm starting to think that the hype bubble surrounding Web 2.0 is getting to the point where it is now truly damaging. The latest proof came when Yahoo announced the results of a very good quarter, and the market hammered them for failing meet expectations.

My expectations for the end user effects of Web 2.0 are still very high. This really is the part of the Web revolution where things get interesting. We're finally past the crawl stage and are starting to shakily stand up. However, the brain trust that has pushed Web 2.0 as a huge driver of financial market change have seriously missed the boat. One of the salient factors of Web 2.0 companies is that their capitalization requirements are extremely minimal. My guess is that many if not most of the creators of these companies aren't interested in trying to become the next Brin or Filo. You can actually build a solid company with organic growth. It's a concept the tech investors just don't seem to understand. You just need a few sharp, hard-working people who know what they're doing. Hardware costs have plummeted, and there are a host of excellent services that have radically reduced the time and money required to create a high tech startup, particularly a Web 2.0-focused company.

Zeldman, et. al. have already begun the gripe-fest about Web 2.0, and I think a lot of that has to do with annoyance at the VCs and other leeches who think they can make a bundle off the insight, determination, and hard work of entrepreneurs. I just hope that the increasing clamor of the Financial Masters of the Universe doesn't drown out the great stuff that so many new companies are creating on the Web.